To decide to become a philosopher seemed as foolish to me as to decide to become a poet. Karl Jaspers More Quotes by Karl Jaspers More Quotes From Karl Jaspers The moment is the sole reality. Karl Jaspers cherish-every-momentinspirationalreality Man is always something more than what he knows of himself. He is not what he is simply once and for all, but is a process; he is not merely an extant life, but is, within that life, endowed with possibilities through the freedom he possesses to make of himself what he will by the activities on which he decides. Karl Jaspers possibilityprocessmen the essence of philosophy is not the possession of the truth but the search for truth. ... Philosophy means to be on the way. Its questions are more essential than its answers, and every answer becomes a new question. Karl Jaspers answersphilosophyway What makes us afraid is our great freedom in the face of the emptiness that has still to be filled. Karl Jaspers emptinessfearfaces The 'public' is a phantom, the phantom of an opinion supposed to exist in a vast number of persons who have no effective interrelation and though the opinion is not effectively present in the units. Such an opinion is spoken of as 'public opinion,' a fiction which is appealed to by individuals and by groups as supporting their special views. It is impalpable, illusory, transient; "'tis here, 'tis there, 'tis gone"; a nullity which can nevertheless for a moment endow the multitude with power to uplift or destroy. Karl Jaspers upliftingviewsnumbers We must learn to talk with each other, and we mutually must understand and accept one another in our extraordinary differences. Karl Jaspers extraordinarydifferencesaccepting There is no God, cry the masses more and more vociferously; and with the loss of God man loses his sense of values — is, as it were, massacred because he feels himself of no account. Karl Jaspers crylossmen What is meaningful cannot in fact be isolated…. We achieve understanding within a circular movement from particular facts to the whole that includes them and back again from the whole thus reached to the particular significant facts. Karl Jaspers movementunderstandingmeaningful Only in those moments when I exercise my freedom am I fully myself. Karl Jaspers momentsexercise Reason is like an open secret that can become known to anyone at any time; it is the quiet space into which everyone can enter through his own thought Karl Jaspers spacesecretquiet Everything depends therefore on encountering thought at its source. Such thought is the reality of man's being, which achieved consciousness and understanding of itself through it. Karl Jaspers understandingmenreality The soul of a landscape, the spirits of the elements, the genius of every place will be revealed to a loving view of nature. Karl Jaspers geniussoulviews Greatness of mind becomes an object of love only when the power at work in it itself has a noble character Karl Jaspers greatnessmindcharacter On the question of the world as a whole, science founders. For scientific knowledge the world lies in fragments, the more so the more precise our scientific knowledge becomes. Karl Jaspers sciencelyingknowledge A scientific approach means knowing what one knows and what one doesn't. Absolute or complete knowledge is unscientific. Karl Jaspers approachknowingmean Philosophy as practice does not mean its restriction to utility or applicability, that is, to what serves morality or produces serenity of soul. Karl Jaspers motherhoodphilosophymean The study of law left me unsatisfied, because I did not know the aspects of life which it serves. I perceived only the intricate mental juggling with fictions that did not interest me. Karl Jaspers studylawfiction I discovered that the study of past philosophers is of little use unless our own reality enters into it. Our reality alone allows the thinker's questions to become comprehensible. Karl Jaspers littlesrealitypast Only then, approaching my fortieth birthday, I made philosophy my life's work. Karl Jaspers madebirthdayphilosophy With the disintegration of all that [Nietzsche] had revered, existence, to him, had become a desert in which only one thing remained, namely that which had relentlessly forced him into this path: truthfulness that knows no limits and is not subject to any condition. Karl Jaspers desertlimitspath
